SEARCH RESULTS FOR: Riley Puckett
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(Vocals, guitar, 1894–1946) Much of the success of The Skillet Lickers, the north Georgia string band led by Gid Tanner, was due to the warm, friendly singing of the blind Riley Puckett, who also anchored them with eccentric single-note guitar runs dictated by his own sense of time and melody. In 1924, he and ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen

(Vocals, guitar, harmonica, b. 1933) Riley was born in Pocahontas, Arkansas, and enjoyed seven releases on Sun without ever securing the hit that his finest work undoubtedly deserved. He and his band were often utilized as session musicians and worked with many other Sun artists. A highly versatile artist, he eventually recorded rockabilly, blues ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen

b. 1935 American composer Initially influenced by Stockhausen, Riley was profoundly affected by the sustained, minimalist style of La Monte Young, whom he met at the University of California at Berkeley. He had paid for his studies by playing ragtime in a bar. He soon became interested in improvised music and ‘happenings’ and made a serious study of ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

(Vocals, banjo, 1892–1931) A textile-mill worker and banjo player, Poole led one of the finest of old-time bands, The North Carolina Ramblers, with guitarist Roy Harvey (1892–1958) and a succession of fiddlers headed by Posey Rorer. Their first release, ‘Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down Blues’ and ‘Can I Sleep In Your Barn Tonight, ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen

(Fiddle, banjo, vocals, 1885–1960) An old-time fiddler and comic singer from Dacula, Georgia, Tanner gave his name to the most famous of old-time string bands, The Skillet Lickers, though his medicine-show routines were regarded as an embarrassment by younger members of the band, which included fiddler Clayton McMichen (1900–70), who was determined to ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen

Uncle Dave Macon (1870–1952) was the first star of country music. Other artists got on disc first: men like Eck Robertson, Henry Whitter, Fiddlin’ John Carson, Gid Tanner and Riley Puckett. Uncle Dave didn’t enter a recording studio until July 1924 – whereupon he proved to be quite productive – but he had another route to the affections ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen

There is no distinct boundary line between the early​ and old-time country era, when the music was still relatively unshaped by the American mainstream, and the modern age, when country music’s popularity and ubiquity have made it very much a part of the mass culture. But it was in the 1920s, due to the emerging radio and ...

Source: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music, general editor Paul Du Noyer

‘The fiddle and guitar craze is sweeping northward!’ ran Columbia Records’ ad in Talking Machine World on 15 June 1924. ‘Columbia leads with records of old-fashioned southern songs and dances. [Our] novel fiddle and guitar records, by Tanner and Puckett, won instant and widespread popularity with their tuneful harmony and sprightliness… The records of these quaint musicians which ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen

La Monte Young was saxophonist and jazz musician as a youth, but his postgraduate work at the University of California at Berkeley (where he met Riley) led to a performance of his Trio for Strings (1958) arranged by his composition teacher, Seymour Shifrin (1926–79), in an attempt to show Young how much he had miscalculated. The work, consisting ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

The legend of Sun Records seems to expand and shine brighter with every passing year, as successive generations discover the almost unbelievable array of musical gems that were created at that modest little studio at 706 Union Avenue, Memphis. Sun was the brainchild of one man and it is no exaggeration to say that without his contribution, not ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen

Country music and gospel have always been close partners, since many gospel acts come from the American South, and Nashville, the home of country music, lies in the heart of the Bible Belt. Numerous influences abound within the Church, stretching from traditional shape-note singing that goes back several hundred years, to today’s contemporary and Christian ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen

After the devastation wrought in Europe by World War II, the urgent task of rebuilding the continent’s war-torn urban fabric demanded radical solutions. These were found in the centralized urban planning advocated before the war by architects such as Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Writing in 1953, the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928–2007) created an explicit analogy ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

Unlike rock music, electronic music is made partly or wholly using electronic equipment – tape machines, synthesizers, keyboards, sequencers, drum machines and computer programmes. Its origins can be found in the middle of the nineteenth century, when many of electronic music’s theories and processes were conceived. In 1863 German scientist Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz ...

Source: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music, general editor Paul Du Noyer

(Guitar, vocals, b. 1925) Riley B. King, from Indianola, Mississippi, is arguably the last surviving authentic blues artist. Orphaned, he took up guitar aged 15, turning professional after US military service. In 1947, he moved to Memphis and lived with cousin Bukka White. There, he worked on a local radio station, ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock, general editor Michael Heatley

When the great Mississippi musician Riley King left the cotton fields to seek his fortune in Memphis in 1946, he had $2.50 in his pocket and a battered guitar in his hand. Today, his name is synonymous with blues music itself, yet his ascendance to the zenith of the blues world never altered his friendly, downhome ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz & Blues, founding editor Howard Mandel
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